This is kind of a horror story, with a happing ending. It contains a lot of gore images, and some porn. Very long story.

TL;DR Network upgrade

Once upon a time, there were two companies HA and HP, both owned by HC. Many years went by and the two companies worked along side each one another, but sometimes there were trouble, because they weren't sure who was supposed to bill the client for projects HA and HP had worked on together.

At HA there was an IT guy, an imbecile of such. He's very slow at doing his job, doesn't exactly understand what he's doing, nor security principles.

The IT guy at HA also did some IT work for HP from time to time when needed. But he was not in charge of the infrastructure for HP, that was the jobb for one developer who didn't really know what he was doing either.

Whenever a new server was set up at HP, the developer tried many solutions, until he landed on one, but he never removed the other tested solutions, and the config is scattered all around. And no documentation!!
Same goes with network, when something new was added, the old was never removed or reconfigured to something else.

One dark winter, a knight arrived at HP. He had many skills. Networking, server management, development, design and generally a fucking awesome viking.
This genius would often try to cleanse the network and servers, and begged his boss to let him buy new equipment to replace the old, to no prevail.
Whenever he would look in the server room, he would get shivers down his back.
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/Ie9x3YC33C.j...)

One and a half year later, the powerful owners in HA, HP and HC decided it was finally time to merge HA and HP together to HS. The knight thought this was his moment, he should ask CEO if he could be in charge of migrating the network, and do a complete overhault so they could get 1Gb interwebz speeds.

The knight had to come up with a plan and some price estimates, as the IT guy also would do this.
The IT guy proposed his solution, a Sonicwall gateway to 22 000 NOK, and using a 3rd party company to manage it for 3000 NOK/month.
"This is absurd", said the knight to the CEO and CXO, "I can come up with a better solution that is a complete upgrade. And it will be super easy to manage."
The CEO and CXO gave the knight a thumbs up. The race was on. We're moving in 2 months, I got to have the equipment by then, so I need a plan by the end of the week.
He roamed the wide internet, looked at many solutions, and ended up with going for Ubiquiti's Unifi series. Cheap, reliable and pretty nice to look at.

The CXO had mentioned the WiFi at HA was pretty bad, as there was WLAN for each meeting room, and one for the desks, so the phone would constantly jump between networks.
So the knight ended up with this solution:
2x Unifi Securtiy Gateway Pro 4
2x Unifi 48port
1x Unifi 10G 16port
5x Unifi AP-AC-Lite
12x pairs of 10G unifi fibre modules
All with a price tag around the one Sonicwall for 22 000 NOK, not including patch cables, POE injectors and fibre cables.

The knight presented this to the CXO, whom is not very fond of the IT guy, and the CXO thought this was a great solution.
But the IT guy had to have a say at this too, so he was sent the solution and had 2 weeks to dispute the soltion.
Time went by, CXO started to get tired of the waiting, so he called in a meeting with the knight and the IT guy, this was the IT guys chance to dispute the solution.
All he had to say was he was familiar with the Sonicwall solution, and having a 3rd party company managing it is great.
He was given another 2 weeks to dispute the solution, yet nothing happened.

The CXO gave the thumbs up, and the knight orders the equipment.
At this time, the knight asks the IT guy for access to the server room at HA, and a key (which would take 2 months to get sorted, because IT guys is a slow imbecile)

The horrors, Oh the horrors, the knight had never seen anything like this before.
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/HfptwEh9qT.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/HfptwEh9qT.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/hmOE2ZuQuE.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/4Flmkx6slQ.j...)

What are all these for, why is there a fan ductaped to on of the servers.
WHAT IS THIS!
Why are there cables tied in a knot.
WHY!
These are questions we never will know the answers too.

The knight needs access to the servers, and sonicwall to see how this is configured.
After 1.5 month he gains access to the sonicwall and one of the xserve.
What the knight discovers baffles him.
All ports are open, sonicwall is basically in bridge mode and handing out public IPs to every device connected to it.
No VLANs, everything, just open...

Just came back from a new café (to the pedantic among us, yes I know it's a bar.. get over it).

And I met some Apple fanboy 🤭

So the guy kept on bragging about his shiny iPhone 6.. and I figured that I'd chime in. Due to my short-term memory being terrible, I'll be paraphrasing here.
M: me
S: iPhone usar _/\_

M: iPhone 6 ey..? I've heard about some devices in which the old ones are throttled down in a system update "to save the battery".
S: Yes, biweekly updates!! You can even delay them to tune them down to the time during which your device is charging and can commence its system update.
M (thinking): You've clearly missed the point sir.. but on Android, system updates don't need to be willfully delayed even. They (usually) won't commence unless your device is 80% and charging. OnePlus has been an exception to this though, probably under the assumption that their users are mostly power users that know what they're doing.

M: You do realize that given that your iPhone 6 is quite old already, Apple will very likely start throttling your device during a system update in the next few months, right.
S: What the hell dude.. look, look how smoothly it's been going for the last few years!!! Nothing wrong with that.
M: Just wait until your repair bill comes from those Geniuses 🤭

M: Sir, you do realize that Apple quotes €600 for battery repairs nowadays, right.
S: What the hell dude!!! I can buy a whole new phone for that much!!
M: Exactly!! That's exactly Apple's business tactic!!! They design their phones as such that the battery replacement (one of the most common repairs) requires you to replace not only the battery, but the whole chassis!!! And on the XS, the battery replacement is nothing short of atrocious!!!
M: Here, have a look at this: https://youtube.com/watch/...
*shows Louis' newest video about him switching to iPhone XS*

S: Yeah that's just bullshit. I bet you're showing me this on one of those crappy Samsungs.
M: No sir. I'm showing this on my Nexus 6P, that is tethered to my OnePlus 6T. Speaking of which, let me introduce you to the Nexus 6P's (one of the crappiest Android flagships to ever exist) repair, the battery replacement of which I've done myself.
(you can watch the iFixit video about it here: https://youtube.com/watch/...)
*explains heatgun, screwdriver, heatgun battery replacement of Nexus 6P and the time each step takes - more than an hour combined*

S: Yeah that's because it's one of those crappy Androids. That'd never happen to this shiny iPhone, look, I've got a $20 battery right here!!!
*shows battery*
M: Sir... That's a battery for a MacBook. A laptop battery.... 🤨

I love how willfully ignorant these Apple users are. To them, all that exists is Apple and Samsung (both of which I hate because lockdown). And they apparently don't even know what repair they have to look for when they'll need one.. maybe that's why those Genius Bars exist? 🤭
I'd love to see the guy's face when the Geniuses quote him the price for battery replacement when his planned obsolescence time comes 🤭